Our five-year effort to design and clinically evaluate an artificial skin for massively burnt patients has advanced considerably. We have now succeeded to (a) control infection of large experimental wounds by grafting them with our composite materials, (b) control moisture flux through the graft within the physiological range, (c) prevent rejection of the graft, (d) control the lifetime of the graft within the range 5 to much longer than 25 days, and (e) induce cells from the viable tissues of the animal which are in contact with our porous graft to migrate into it and to synthesize new connective tissue. No other engineering material, including all synthetic and natural polymers that have been published or patented in the past, can simultaneously accomplish these five objectives, which our composites can. Only an autograft (self-graft) can achieve all these objectives and solve the problem of skin replacement satisfactorily. On the other hand, obtaining an autograft does subject an already very sick patient to additional trauma; and if the skin area (totalling about 20 square feet in an adult male) is destroyed to an extent much larger than 50%, there just is not enough autograft to cover the massively wounded patient. Our medical collaborator is John F. Burke, M.D., Helen Andrus Benedict Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School and Chief of Staff, Shriners Burns Institute. Dr. Burke and his staff are convinced that clinical trials should start as soon as logistically possible.